But paralleling this rediscovery of the work of modern architects such as Le Corbusier was their renewed interest in the existing or traditional city, influenced by the teachings of the British-born, American-naturalised architectural historian, critic, theoretician, and teacher Colin Rowe and the writings of Aldo Rossi, Italian architect and designer and the first Italian to receive the Pritzker Prize.

Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Second Addition, Trinity College Dublin, 2006.

In Architecture of the City of 1966, Rossi argued that the city is composed of only two types of buildings, monuments and houses. Private houses are "the fabric of the city, while public monuments stand forth because they are exceptions to the consistent fabric" he argues.

Famously described by Pulitzer Prize winning architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, as a poet who happens to be an architect, Rossi and his followers in the Tendenza movement believed that any new buildings in existing cities "should emphasize the construction of precisely scaled and shaped exterior spaces of inhabitation – streets, plazas, courtyards – rather than freestanding buildings surrounded by undefined ‘empty’ space," McCarter writes.

Università Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy (2002Ð8)

The international character of the Tendenza was made clear in the collective manifesto published in 1978 under the title, Rational Architecture: The Reconstruction of the European City. Rossi became extremely influential in the wake of its publication.

New University Campus, UTEC, Lima, Peru, 2015

One can hardly overestimate the influence this renewed focus on the traditional city had on young architects then establishing their practices in Dublin, such as Grafton Architects. Rossi argued that a city must be studied and valued as something constructed over time; of particular interest are urban artifacts that withstand the passage of time.

President’s House, University of Limerick, Limerick (2006–11)

Rossi believed that the city remembers its past (our "collective memory"), and that we use that memory through monuments which give structure to the city, something that Grafton through their work across the big cities of the world, continually subscribe to.

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